Championing the
Changemakers

Phobia or fatigue? When it comes to toxic chemicals, we all have our own way of coping with information overload. This webcast, free to BuildingGreen Premium members, helps you sort it all out.

Even if we try to ignore it, we are constantly barraged with information about dangerous chemicals in our food, our water, our dust, our air…even... Read more

A would-be HVAC designer wonders if a ductless mini-split head can be hidden in a closet and connected to conventional ductwork.

This post by Scott Gibson first appeared on Green Building Advisor.

A ductless mini-split head isn't everyone's cup of tea, at least not aesthetically. One reader wonders if he can still get the benefits of a... Read more

LED lighting has come a long way in a very few years and can now fully supplant incandescent and fluorescent technology Cree's new CR6 LED downlight for recessed cans.Photo Credit: Cree

Our electrician was in last week installing lighting in our new home here in southern Vermont. Virtually all of our lighting will be LEDs—... Read more

WUFI doesn’t kill buildings. Poor design, specification, and workmanship kill buildings.

Last year, BuildingGreen made a modeling software program one of our Top-10 Green Building Products for the first time—the WUFI hygrothermal modeling software from Fraunhofer IBP and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (see “Using WUFI to Prevent Moisture... Read more

Rooftop design will reduce storm water runoff into the East River and support a new beekeeping business benefiting the formerly incarcerated. A newly installed roof on top of the Osborne Association building in the South Bronx is projected to manage more than 100,000 gallons of rainwater and will provide habitat for bees that supply honey for the... Read more

Costs associated with LEED add around 1% to hospitals’ capital costs. Lacking data on operational benefits, some see that as a deterrent.

A new study released by the architecture firm Perkins+Will reveals cost premiums are decreasing for healthcare facilities to achieve LEED certification and are not cost prohibitive in most cases, but they... Read more

New regulations could make gaming consoles and other products sold in California more efficient. Gaming consoles like the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii may soon have to meet new efficiency standards to be sold in California—which represents an eighth of all U.S. consumers and often sets standards that are adopted nationwide.

The California... Read more

Tar sands and Obamacare debates could end it all for widely hoped-for Shaheen-Portman legislation. Months before the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act (S. 761) made it out of committee, acrimony over energy-related amendments was already apparent (see “Environmentalists Split Over Popular Energy Bill” and “The Hidden Beltway... Read more

Exposure to MDI in spray foam is a known risk, but what about other chemicals? And is that 24-hour re-entry period based on science? The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is asking installers to help with onsite air sampling to facilitate ongoing research of the lesser-known chemicals in spray polyurethane foam (SPF)—a... Read more

Trendsetting regulations in California will have manufacturers disclosing ingredients and reformulating their products. California’s new Safer Consumer Product Regulations, set to take effect October 1, 2013, will require manufacturers of certain products that contain one or more chemicals deemed hazardous by the California Department of Toxic... Read more

NREL unveils high-tech data center for renewable energy research that’s expected to achieve LEED Platinum.

A new research center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL) campus in Golden, Colorado, holds a supercomputer and the nation’s only utility-scale grid simulator to test renewable technologies—yet its constant use by... Read more

Mechanical tradeoffs may once again give builders more flexibility to bring a building up to code. Why tradeoffs might make a comeback

Mechanical tradeoffs were first eliminated from the code in 2009—a key change calculated to help the 2009 standard see a projected efficiency gain of 15% over the 2006 code, according to the U.S. Department... Read more

Forty-year-old caps on silica dust in construction and industry are to be slashed by OSHA. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is proposing more stringent exposure limits for crystalline silica—dust particles produced by cutting or crushing stone products and a known cause of lung cancer and silicosis. Heightened... Read more

Although data quality remains rough, multifamily buildings and water use information released for the first time provides fodder for research in energy efficiency.

Admitting you have a problem is the key first step in fighting addiction, and New York City has clearly taken that step with respect to its fossil fuel habit. With the September 25... Read more

A new report seeks to bring health and well-being to the forefront of the sustainable design movement. Recognizing that green building could be a tool to address some of our worst public health challenges—such as asthma, obesity, and cancer—the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is taking steps to better align green building goals with a public... Read more

Indoor air quality resource goes beyond ventilation standards, offering best practices in building construction.

In an effort to promote better indoor air quality, ASHRAE recently made its design and construction guide for indoor air quality available for free through its online bookstore.

Released in 2009, The Indoor Air Quality... Read more

Not linoleum, not cork: the first industry-wide environmental product declarations for flooring cover vinyl and rubber. The Resilient Floor Covering Institute (RFCI) recently released the first set of industry-wide environmental product declarations (EPDs) for flooring. These documents describe a product’s life-cycle-based environmental impacts... Read more

Soraa uses a unique emitter technology that gives its MR16 lamps better color quality and performance than standard LEDs. Over the past few years, the energy performance of LED lighting has improved, and the costs have dropped, but most LEDs still fall short of their incandescent counterparts in overall light quality. In applications where light... Read more

Cree’s TW Series LED Bulb has a CRI of 93 and is available in both 40- and 60-watt equivalent versions. Introduced in September 2013, Cree’s TW (TrueWhite) Series LED Bulb has an industry-best color rendering index (CRI) of 93. The TW series follows the March 2013 launch of the company’s standard 80 CRI lamp (bulb) and is the first A19 lamp to... Read more

Updated May 21, 2025; updates by Elene Drosos

Natural ventilation, daylighting, rainwater harvesting: these and many other “climate-responsive” strategies are hallmarks of sustainable design because they take advantage of freely available, inexhaustible resources. Working with nature is all very well as long as nature is fairly... Read more